be yoked then with your wife

There’s this story in the Bible I was thinking about today. Maybe it wasn’t even a story. Maybe it was more of a commandment (outside the Big Ten). The gist of it is that when you get married, you are then yoked with your new spouse and you are instructed -- commanded, in fact – to leave your birth family and go with your new family.

I’ve been thinking about this today because of a very big argument I got into with my grandmother Friday. Well, to me it was a big argument. To her, perhaps it wasn’t much of anything.

Here’s the background. I’ll be succinct and limit myself to one paragraph.

My mom died when I was 8. My grandmother raised me from that point forward. My other option was to live with my dad and evil (truly evil) stepmother. I wanted to live with my grandparents so they went to court and gained custody. She was the best surrogate mother I could have asked for, always loving, always supportive, always encouraging. When I was a teenager, I rebelled in a fairly normal teenage way, though my attitude was probably over-the-top rude. I moved out at 18 years old, spent the next 8 years in college living on my own, being supported off and on by my grandparents. I quit accepting any financial help from them when I was 26 and just recently began accepting their offers again here and there. She has never forgiven me nor let me forget how rebellious and rude I was between the ages of about 17 - 23. She still finds a way to work it into our conversation every. single. time we see each other. That is the long story very very short.

So on Friday, Jeff had a car accident on his way to work from Sassy’s party. He wasn’t hurt, but his car was broken and he had to fix it the next morning. I had to call my grandma to let her know Sassy’s family party on Saturday morning at our house would have to be cancelled, in case she was planning to come.

She wasn’t.

Since we’ve slowly begun to talk more on the phone and since she is like a mother to me, I told her the sordid details of the accident. You see, we found out after the accident that Jeff didn’t have insurance on his car. Yes, he was driving without insurance. We didn’t even know. When he registered his car, he registered in our new state. When he called our insurance company, they gave him a policy in our new state that was a completely separate policy from the one I was paying on. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a mailbox at our new property at that time, so all bills were returned to sender.

I didn’t realize this was going on. I thought I was paying for all cars on the policy I paid each month.

So all of a sudden, we are now figuring any and all proceeds from our old house, if and when it sells, will have to be handed straight over to the guy he hit. We can’t allow it to go to court at all. Jeff’s job depends on him having a CDL. If he loses his license due to driving without insurance, he’d lose his job, since I would not drive him to work an hour each way with a newborn in tow, and he’d lose his CDL, making it even harder to get another job.

You know why I share any of this with anyone? With my grandma? You know why I point out the worst case scenario first thing? I like to be prepared for the worst case scenario, that’s always my style. Prepare for the worst, be pleasantly surprised by anything better. But even more, I like to conquer. I’ve mentioned this before. All my blog posts follow that same pattern. I present my problem, then I share how I conquer it, or accept it, or view it differently. It’s all about coming out on top, rising victorious, right? That’s probably why I tell my grandma these things. So I can claim victory over them. That, and I like to share. And if I’m going to share, then let’s share worst-case because if I’m going to share, let’s at least be interesting, for crying out loud.

Jeff asked me what was I thinking, how could I not have known to keep that to myself.

Well….I was tired. I was weak. I was too trusting. I was needing a little support. And I was seeking a real connection.

My grandma said to me, “You two have more problems…”

I asked her what she meant by that.

“I don’t know,” she said, “Some people, problems just follow them around. You two, it’s like problems search you out.”

I told her that was a very hurtful thing to say, and it wasn’t even true. I didn’t say a few things I wish I’d thought of at the time, like:

“Well, that just makes me an excellent problem-solver.”

Or, “Yep, we do have major problems, we’re homeless, I’m hooked on heroin and my husband’s in jail.”

Or, “WTF is that supposed to mean you crazy loon?!?!”

OK, not that last one. That’s my emotions talking again.

Honestly, if your “mom” says to you that problems seem to search you out, you and I, all of us, we know what that means. It means, “I think you’re a loser.”

Needless to say, I was pretty hurt. I know her idea of success is very different from mine. Her idea of success involves how big your numbers are on your various investment account statements. My idea of success involves how many children I have and how many acres we live on. Her idea of success involves what title you have at your job. My idea of success involves being able to do what I want, even (especially) if that means not having a career at all.

But still? Will she ever let it go? Sometimes it seems she purposefully hurts me, though I’ve never seen her as mean-spirited.

So I told her it was a very hurtful thing to say, especially coming from her. I told her it only seemed like I had more problems that anyone else because I told her everything, since she was like a mother to me.

To which she said, two days before Mother’s Day, “Not really.”

Ouch. Okay then.

I cried all night Friday night. I wanted to cry all day Saturday. And then all day Sunday too. It still pains me to remember it. So, I’ll move on to the victory part. The realizing and the conquering.

Sunday evening I started thinking maybe the lesson I should learn from this is that I shouldn’t be so dependent on an earthly relationship. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so dependent on the approval of another human being – an imperfect human being. I think the lesson in this is that it isn’t in God’s plan for me to desire my mother’s approval for my whole life. Nor anyone else’s, except those in my immediate family, for any decision I make affects them as well.

If I keep seeking her approval or anyone else’s approval, I will never have the courage to do as God intends me to do, which is to use my inborn gifts for Good. I do not believe that the love of money is Good. It isn’t my path. For example, if I ever must use my investment accounts as a marker of my success, then I will be wildly unsuccessful for the rest of my life. When I seek her approval, I spend too much time upset about my lack of investment accounts and her ensuing disappointment than I do using my gifts for Good.

And as I explained all this to my good friend K on the phone today, that Bible verse struck me and I thought, “A-ha! That is why you must become yoked with your spouse and LEAVE your birth family.” In this modern day and age, is easy driving distance actually LEAVING your birth family? Not really.

I was nervous that this move would put Jeff and I at each other’s throats all the time. We can be prone to arguing, and with no one else around, I was afraid there wouldn’t be enough distraction when we needed it.

It’s actually turned out just the opposite. We argue less, if anything, and we actually cleave to each other. Cleave? Is that the word used in the actual Bible verse? I’d use the internet to find out if I could.

At any rate, it looks like the Bible is right again. It no longer surprises me; rather, I’ve now reached the point where I believe what is written as truth first, then always come to realize it on my own, in my own way, with my own experience later.